Former
Top US Security Officials Back Geneva Accordby Jim Lobe
December 9, 2003

Three
days after the administration of President George W. Bush shrugged off
the unofficial Israeli-Palestinian peace plan released last week in
Geneva, a bipartisan group of eight former top U.S. national-security
officials said they supported the so-called "Geneva Accord."

The
endorsement of the group, which includes four former national security
advisers, comes amid a growing controversy within the US Jewish community
about the plan, as well as indications that Israel's ruling Likud coalition
is deeply divided about how to react to it.

The
plan, a 50-page draft treaty based largely on tentative agreements reached
between official Israeli and Palestinian delegations at Taba, Egypt,
in January 2001, proposes the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian
state with predominantly Arab parts of East Jerusalem as its capital.

It
provides for the absorption by Israel of a number of Jewish settlements
in the West Bank close to the "green line" that defined Israel's
border before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in exchange for a comparable
amount of Israeli territory contiguous with Palestinian territory.

The
plan was worked out by teams led by Israel's former justice minister,
Yossi Beilin, and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed
Rabbo, and signed in the presence of former US President Jimmy Carter,
who negotiated the Israel-Egypt Camp David accord 25 years ago, among
other international statesmen and women.

Despite
the backing it received from Carter and European leaders, in particular,
however, most analysts believe its prospects rest primarily on the attitude
taken by the Bush administration, which, as Israel's strongest ally,
also enjoys the most leverage over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Sharon
and his mainly neo-conservative allies in Washington have been remarkably
successful in securing US support for his more-aggressive stance against
the Palestinians and particularly Palestinian Authority President Yassir
Arafat in the context of the US "war on terrorism."

It
was thus considered remarkable that the Geneva Accord  and a similar,
shorter one drawn up by former Israeli intelligence chief Ami Ayalon
and a leading Palestinian, Sari Nusseibeh  drew favorable comments
last month from both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, even after the government of Prime Minister
Sharon denounced it as subversive.

Indeed,
both Powell and Wolfowitz scheduled meetings with Beilin and Nusseibeh,
who traveled to the US to mobilize support for the effort after the
signing in Geneva.

The
Israeli government, however, and its right-wing Jewish and Christian
allies in Washington also mobilized to try to prevent the meetings from
taking place. Sharon's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, for example,
publicly warned that Powell would be making a mistake if he went ahead
with the meeting.

"I
think he is not helping the process," Olmert, who is considered
close to Sharon, warned, repeating the government's arguments that the
U.S.-backed "road map" was the only peace plan on the table.

As
pressure increased, the administration began to succumb. Bush's national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, rejected a request for a meeting,
while Bush himself, when asked about the accord at a White House photo
opportunity with Jordan's King Abdullah on Dec. 4, struck a deliberately
ambiguous note. A meeting between Powell and the Accord's two authors
would be "productive so long as they adhere to the principles I've
...outlined," an allusion to Washington's adherence to the road
map.

Meanwhile,
Wolfowitz canceled his meeting at the last moment. While his office
offered no explanation, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak,
who is close to the Pentagon, reported Sunday that the cancellation
was due to pressure from the White House.

"We
believe that the best way to move forward is to address at the outset,
not at the end of an incremental process, all the basic principles of
a fair and lasting solution," wrote the officials in an implicit
critique of both the Oslo process and the road map.

"Postponing
the final outcome makes any progress hostage to extremists on both sides.
A process must be devised to give practical and political expression
to the heartfelt desire of clear majorities on both sides to end this
conflict once and for all," the statement said.

Signers
included the national security advisers of Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski;
former President Ronald Reagan, Richard Allen and Robert McFarlane;
and former President Bill Clinton, Anthony Lake; as well as Clinton's
first secretary of state, Warren Christopher; Reagan's defense secretary,
Frank Carlucci; and former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who served
under former President George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War, but who
previously served as ambassadors to both Israel and Egypt. The eighth
signer was Robert McNamara, defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations who later headed the World Bank.

The
most significant omissions on the statement included Clinton's second
national security adviser, Sandy Berger, and secretary of state, Madeleine
Albright, both of whom, according to sources, have conveyed their support
privately and intend to do so publicly as well. Clinton himself has
written favorably of the initiative and reportedly offered the two authors
his personal assistance when they met by accident on a train between
Washington and New York last week.

Also
missing was former Secretary of State James Baker, who, according to
sources, has expressed support but feels it would be awkward to do so
publicly now that he has been appointed by the administration as the
director of its efforts to gain debt relief for Iraq from its international
creditors. Significantly, Baker's Institute for Public Policy at Rice
University, cosponsored with ICG a recent poll of Palestinians and Israelis
that found that a majority of each people supported the basic principles
of the Geneva Accord.

These
endorsements suggest that Bush's efforts to refocus attention on the
road map, which has made virtually no progress since it was released
last January, may not be as effective as the White House wishes. Indeed,
the Geneva accord and the People's Voice (which has been signed by more
than 200,000 Israelis and Palestinians) are clearly stirring up the
US Jewish community.

While
right-wing groups like the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) have
attacked the Accord in much the same terms as the Likud in Israel, peace
groups have taken heart. "This is really drawing out a lot of people
who have been reluctant to speak out in the last couple of years,"
said Lewis Roth, a spokesman for Americans
for Peace Now (APN).

While
the large, mainstream Jewish organizations, such as the American Jewish
Committee, have not taken a position on the proposals, the largest Jewish
newspaper, The Forward, called last week for its embrace both
by "Israel's friends" and by Sharon.

At
the same time, leaders of the country's largest synagogue movements
joined a new Jewish, Christian and Muslim coalition called the "National
Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East,"
which last week demanded that Bush step up peace efforts.

Jim
Lobe, works as Inter Press Service's
correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups
and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise in the aftermath
of the September 11, 2001 attacks.